**1. Introduction**

There are at least six book length biographies of Herman Melville (1819-1891) and ten histories of the Russian Revolution currently in print in the English language. On the other hand, if you chase after crystals not whales, or believe that the determination of the structure of matter was a historical pivot, you will be disappointed that there does not exist a single narrative history of crystallography in print in English or any other language to the best of our knowledge. By any measure, crystallography now receives scant attention by historians and scholars.

One admirable attempt to fill this chasm is the wonderfully idiosyncratic *Historical Atlas of Crystallography* published by the International Union of Crystallography (Lima-de-Faria, 1990). It is a treasure of timelines, portraits of crystallographers, and fetishistic reproductions of cover pages of classic monographs, accompanied by revealing essays on various aspects of the history of crystallography by acknowledged experts. But, the *Historical Atlas* is not a narrative history written with one strong voice.

Burke's *The Origin of the Science of Crystals* (Burke, 1966) is such a narrative that runs up to the discovery of X-ray diffraction. It is the best source for those interested in an English language analysis of the history of crystallography. But, this book has been long out-ofprint. (We are not oblivious to the ironies of lamenting in an open-access journal about access to print media. Google Books may ultimately obviate such lamentations but to date only a limited preview of *The Origin…* is available on-line).

As a remedy, we set out to produce an English language edition of I. I. Shafranovskii's two volume *History of the Science of Crystals* only available in Russian. The first volume was subtitled *From Ancient Times to the Beginning of the 19h Century* (Shafranovskii, 1978), and the second volume *The 19th Century* (Shafranovskii, 1980, Figure 1). A third volume covering the

© 2012 Kahr and Shtukenberg, licensee InTech. This is an open access chapter distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. © 2012 Kahr and Shtukenberg, licensee InTech. This is a paper distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

#### 4 Recent Advances in Crystallography

age of X-rays was planned but never materialized. Shafranovskii was a professor at the Leningrad Mining Institute. He had a long-standing interest in the history of crystallography (For a biographical sketch, see next section) and earlier published *The History of Crystallography in Russia* (Shafranovskii, 1962). In many ways, Shafranovskii's later two volume *History of Crystallography* is the best effort to cover a massive subject spanning centuries, countries, and languages. It is a valuable complement to Burke in that it is Russocentric. Generally speaking, Russian science historians comfortably read English, French, and German while American science historians comfortably read…English, French, and German. This has naturally created a bias against Cyrillic texts that became apparent to us during excursions in some highly circumscribed aspects of the history of crystallography (Shtukenberg & Punin, 2007). Burke, for instance, made scant use of Russian sources. For this reason, Shafranovskii restores some balance to the history of crystallography, even if he sometimes chauvinistically overemphasizes Russian sources.

We began our translation project more than one year ago. We made some progress but the labor ahead is many times over the labor that is behind.

Very recently, we became aware of several remarkable manuscripts in English that are freely downloadable from achives.org. Their author is Curtis P. Schuh, whose surname is linked with Shafranovskii in the title of this article. Though incomplete and unpublished, Schuh's manuscripts obviate our perceived need for an English language translation of Shafranovskii. In light of Schuh, the rewards of fully translating Shafranovskii are diminished. Herein, we aim to introduce readers first to Shafranovskii's book, and then to Schuh's unpublished manuscripts in the final section.

Our translations of Shafranovskii's introduction, table of contents, and a sample chapter, follow. Here, we can see his strategy and style. In preparing an English language edition of Shafranovskii's book we did not aspire to make a one-to-one translation. While Shafranovskii is a formidable historian, he is a tiresome, repetitive writer. He engages the reader with an old-fashioned, didactic, 'Soviet' style. Our intent was to reduce his two volumes to one and in the process produce a readable *History of Crystallography*. Striking out redundancies, directive phrases such as "It is important to remember that…", and so on, nods to Academicians, and irrelevant minutiae, should have accomplished most of our aim. We aspired to preserve Shafranovskii's organization and style when it did not interfere with driving the narrative forward. At the same time we intended to add material that has since come to light, and insert narrative glue in places, even while scraping off irksome residues in other places. We had planned to eviscerate a few of Shafranovskii's chapters that give the impression that the author 'ran out of gas' during his extensive undertaking. In reviewing the birth of physical crystallography, Shafranovskii summarizes the seventeen experiments in Bartholinus' (1625-1698) book on the discovery of double refraction in Iceland spar (Bartholinus, 1669, 1959) in the order given. The numbing chapter reads as follows: "In the first experiment… In the second experiment… In the sixteenth experiment… In the last experiment." We elected to rewrite this chapter from scratch. Even though we planned to take considerable liberties, a small effort would spare readers from author's weakest efforts.

Shafranovskii reviewed the relevant historical literature in his introduction. Here, we introduce major sources upon which he was most reliant, and those he was most critical of. Shafranovskii's naturally acknowledges Burke's text. Both Shafranovskii and Burke were admirers of Metzger (1889-1944?) a crystallographer turned philosopher of science. In her doctoral dissertation, *La génese de la Science des Cristaux* (Metzger, 1918), she emphasized the separation of crystallography from other disciplines during 17th and 18th Centuries with special attention to French texts. "Unfortunately," says Shafranovskii, "the fates of the author and her interesting book were tragic. The first page of the manuscript, kindly sent [to me] from Paris by Dr. K. I. Kurilenko, bears a foreboding inscription: 'Author and her book disappeared during the German occupation 1940-1944'". It is now known that Metzger was deported from Lyon to Auschwitz and was not among the twenty who survived her transport of 1501 persons (Freudenthal, 1990).

4 Recent Advances in Crystallography

age of X-rays was planned but never materialized. Shafranovskii was a professor at the Leningrad Mining Institute. He had a long-standing interest in the history of crystallography (For a biographical sketch, see next section) and earlier published *The History of Crystallography in Russia* (Shafranovskii, 1962). In many ways, Shafranovskii's later two volume *History of Crystallography* is the best effort to cover a massive subject spanning centuries, countries, and languages. It is a valuable complement to Burke in that it is Russocentric. Generally speaking, Russian science historians comfortably read English, French, and German while American science historians comfortably read…English, French, and German. This has naturally created a bias against Cyrillic texts that became apparent to us during excursions in some highly circumscribed aspects of the history of crystallography (Shtukenberg & Punin, 2007). Burke, for instance, made scant use of Russian sources. For this reason, Shafranovskii restores some balance to the history of crystallography, even if he

We began our translation project more than one year ago. We made some progress but the

Very recently, we became aware of several remarkable manuscripts in English that are freely downloadable from achives.org. Their author is Curtis P. Schuh, whose surname is linked with Shafranovskii in the title of this article. Though incomplete and unpublished, Schuh's manuscripts obviate our perceived need for an English language translation of Shafranovskii. In light of Schuh, the rewards of fully translating Shafranovskii are diminished. Herein, we aim to introduce readers first to Shafranovskii's book, and then to

Our translations of Shafranovskii's introduction, table of contents, and a sample chapter, follow. Here, we can see his strategy and style. In preparing an English language edition of Shafranovskii's book we did not aspire to make a one-to-one translation. While Shafranovskii is a formidable historian, he is a tiresome, repetitive writer. He engages the reader with an old-fashioned, didactic, 'Soviet' style. Our intent was to reduce his two volumes to one and in the process produce a readable *History of Crystallography*. Striking out redundancies, directive phrases such as "It is important to remember that…", and so on, nods to Academicians, and irrelevant minutiae, should have accomplished most of our aim. We aspired to preserve Shafranovskii's organization and style when it did not interfere with driving the narrative forward. At the same time we intended to add material that has since come to light, and insert narrative glue in places, even while scraping off irksome residues in other places. We had planned to eviscerate a few of Shafranovskii's chapters that give the impression that the author 'ran out of gas' during his extensive undertaking. In reviewing the birth of physical crystallography, Shafranovskii summarizes the seventeen experiments in Bartholinus' (1625-1698) book on the discovery of double refraction in Iceland spar (Bartholinus, 1669, 1959) in the order given. The numbing chapter reads as follows: "In the first experiment… In the second experiment… In the sixteenth experiment… In the last experiment." We elected to rewrite this chapter from scratch. Even though we planned to take considerable liberties, a small effort would spare readers from author's weakest efforts.

sometimes chauvinistically overemphasizes Russian sources.

labor ahead is many times over the labor that is behind.

Schuh's unpublished manuscripts in the final section.

**Figure 1.** I. I. Shafronovski's History of Crystallography, XIXth Century, Volume 2.

German texts dominated the 19th century literature on the history of crystallography, especially those of Marx (1794-1864) and Kobell (1803-1882). Marx's *Geschichte der Kristallkunde* (1825) was valued by Shafranovskii because of its numerous quotations from ancient sources. Kobell's *Geschichte der Mineralogie von 1650-1860,* current at the time of publication (1864, see also Kobell, 1866), contained histories of individual minerals and mineral properties such as magnetism and luminescence. Kobell earned fame as a poet of the upper-Bavarian dialect whose compositions became folk songs. His extended poem *Die Urzeit der Erde* (Kobell, 1856) showcased his knowledge of geoscience in verse.

#### 6 Recent Advances in Crystallography

Groth (1843-1927) published *Entwicklungsgeschichte der mineralogischen Wissenschaften* in 1926. As the founder of the journal *Zeitschrift für Krystallographie*, the author of the collection of crystallographic knowledge *Chemische Kristallographie* (1906-1919), and the source of the crystals that von Laue used for the discovery of X-ray diffraction, his place in the crystallographic firmament is assured. However, according to Shafranovskii, "Despite the prominence of the author, unfortunately the presentation of material [in his history] is sketchy. The review of the second half of the 19th Century is too brief and fragmented for a balanced narrative." Also falling short, according to Shafranovskii, was the Austrian mineralogist Tertsch, whose popular history, *Secrets of the Crystal World. A Romance of Science* (1947), trumpeted hyperbolic language not justified by its contents.

**Figure 2.** I. I. Shafranovskii age ~ 50.

Naturally, Shafranovskii gave special attention to the Russian literature. Terniaev's (1767- 1827) history of mineralogy predated (1819) Marx's comparable work, with a stronger focus on recent events, especially emphasizing the contributions of Haüy (1743-1822). Vernadsky's (1863-1945) *Foundations of Crystallography* (1904) contains a splendid introduction to the history of crystallograpy. He gives affectionate portraits of giants such as Kepler (1571-1630), Steno (1638-1686), Romé de l'Lisle, Haüy (1736-1790), and Bravias (1811-1863), but also acknowledges lesser heroes such as Bernhardi (1770-1850), who helped to conceive the crystallographic systems, and Grassmann Sr. (1779-1852) who developed the stereographic projection, among others. Lemmlein (1901-1962), a specialist in mineral genesis, treated crystallography's past with great respect, especially the work of Lomonosov (Lemmlein, 1940). His brilliant comments to *On Precious Stones* (1989) by the 11th Century Persian scholar Al-Biruni, frame gemology. Shubnikov (1887-1979) posthumously published his brief "Origins of Crystallography" (1972), a popular introduction to the history of crystallography that, like Vernadsky's text, provides biographical information about pioneers.

Memoirs by Ewald (1888-1985) and Bragg (1890-1971), describe the first steps and subsequent developments in X-ray crystallography (Ewald, 1962; Bragg, 1975). Shafranovskii's history ends as X-rays are discovered. A full history of X-ray crystallography, a story of the 20th century, has yet to be written.

Here follows a biographical sketch of Shafranovskii, his table of contents, as well as a translation of the introduction to his two-volume opus, and a late chapter on Pierre Curie's Universal Principle of Symmetry.
